If two items are added to a prio_queue and compare equal,
they currently come out in an apparently random order (this
order is deterministic for a particular sequence of
insertions and removals, but does not necessarily match the
insertion order). This makes it unlike using a date-ordered
commit_list, which is one of the main types we would like to
replace with it (because prio_queue does not suffer from
O(n) insertions).